DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING

In a commuter town outside of London, Ruth Whiting leads a lonesome and tedious existence.

With her sons returned to boarding school after the holidays, her daughter, Angela, to Cambridge, and her oblivious, bloviating husband absented to London during the workweek, Ruth, whether in fact or function, is almost always alone. When she socializes, it is, briefly and superficially, with equally bored bourgeois neighbors, other wives who, "like little icebergs, each keeps a bright and shining face above water; below the surface, submerged in fathoms of leisure, each keeps her own isolated personality....Their friendships, appearing frank and sunny, are febrile and short-lived, turning quickly to malice." And so, purposeless, neglected until someone needs something from her, unable to make or sustain meaningful connections even within her own family, revisiting past regrets that now make up the fundamental architecture of her life, Ruth finds her sense of self and security destabilizing. No longer trusted to remain independent, she is further isolated, attended by the family physician, who has bafflingly prescribed a trip alone to Antibes, wardened by the patronizing, priggish Miss de Beer. But when Angela comes to her for help with an unwanted pregnancy, retreading a younger Ruth's own missteps, a chance at real closeness may finally have arrived. The profound gap between what goes unsaid—which is often volumes—and what the characters say—typically the most minimal, noncommittal response available—drives Mortimer's bone-dry humor, illuminating the Whitings' vulnerable humanity and further alienation as they fumble for intimacy with one another and those in their orbit. Originally published in 1958, a full decade before abortion was legalized in the U.K., the book is as salient a study of the disparate views and persistent inequities around reproductive health care for present-day U.S. readers as it is illuminating of midcentury English attitudes and conditions.

A wry dissection of domestic despair and affluent ennui and a topical introduction to Mortimer's body of literary work.